Anchorage, Alaska
Home of the third largest cargo airport in the world (first is Hong Kong, and then Memphis. Ahead, even, of Shanghai!). Colour me surprised, and cleverer. (Who knew Memphis is the logistics hub of America?) Thanks, Mike King of The Loadstar Podcast (E14, Nov 23/23). Anchorage is also the name of a rather lovely song…
Maersk Danube (II)
Duncan Dock was a positive hub of activity today with getting boxes off this big boy, who’s only been waiting since Monday. (This action took at least 4mins.) Might be funny to quip about going back tomorrow to watch another box come off. In a world where that sort of joke is funny. Instead, should…
Landmines and Diamonds
Watching Season 6 of The Crown (first 4 episodes dropped 16 Nov). It’s mostly about the crash – events leading up to, etc. – that killed Diana in Paris in 1997. People don’t love it. Bad writing, they say. And insensitive, some of the others say, to the treatment of its subject. But maybe it’s…
Maersk Danube
256m. Flag: Singapore. I missed the tug action because of golf. Meanwhile, local news uses numbers to confuse people:
New words (I)
Cetacean: Should I be embarrassed that I didn’t learn this word till today? I’ve known about coelacanths forever, and they don’t even exist anymore. (But I might have thought that a dolphin is actually a fish, which IS an embarrassing obstacle to grouping dolphins and whales in the same taxonomic drawer.) I shall now go…
Displacement (I)
Bad things continue to happen in the “2023 Israel-Hamas War“, now one month and two days old. Or one month and two days in – to its Wikipedia entry and current media cycle, more graphic in display and horrific in design by the day. But not old. Today Jenin was on/in the news for being…
Hamburg Süd and Dr. Oetker Pizza
Occam’s boring razor will most likely prevail, ie. that she just missed her slot and now has to wait her turn. But check this (Wikipedia): Dr. Oetker as in frozen pizza? Yup. For the next time someone tries to deny a connection between box ships and a pizza which might just be in their freezer.
Panama Canal
From NYT, 1 November, “Drought Saps the Panama Canal, Disrupting Global Trade”: From FreightWaves, 1 November: The NB. bit for an Exec. Summary: So things are not looking good for large vessels (and their owners) who were relying on that artificial shortcut from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean to get stuff in their boxes to…
Maersk Chennai
249m. Apparently off to Jebel Ali (UAE) next. Singaporean flag. (Cruise ship Vasco da Gama has fucked off.) Yesterday we built a container. Probably should have started with the NB. instruction to get glue. Still, a lesson in engineering and Malcom Maclean’s big idea for standardizing boxes and how every little bit has a function.